A family find

[estott]

Picked this up on Ebay recently- not an interesting cylinder, but my grandmother's uncle, Milton Z. Schubert, was an Edison dealer. Do any of YOU have a dealer in your past?

[Henry]

In the attached photo, M.Z. Schubert's Music House sign is visible behind the utility pole, in the half block with the Orpheum Theater. All of the buildings in the photo are gone, except that the Lyric has been transformed, with a newer façade, into Miller Symphony Hall, home of the Allentown Symphony. Where the Orpheum and Schubert's once stood, an apartment building is now under construction next door to Symphony Hall. Click on the image to enlarge.

This is the source page link:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... eaters.jpg

[estott]

Milton's brother Edwin (my Great-Grandfather) was head violinist at the Lyric.

[Chuck]

Ahh....and look at that! Streetcar tracks!

Makes me wonder what heavy wooden interurban trains
use to rumble past that spot?

Those were much better days for sure...

[Henry]

Ahh....and look at that! Streetcar tracks!

Makes me wonder what heavy wooden interurban trains
use to rumble past that spot?

Those were much better days for sure...

To answer your question, none. City cars used the rails in North and South Sixth. On South Eighth Street, heavy Jewett-built interurbans (composite wood-metal construction) began their 50-mile trip to Philadelphia (Upper Darby) from the Liberty Bell Route Terminal. One of these cars, no. 801, with fully restored exterior, is preserved in the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton. Here's a photo of an 800-series car toward the end of its career (it's in pretty rough shape):

[Henry]

Milton's brother Edwin (my Great-Grandfather) was head violinist at the Lyric.

Burlesque survived at the Lyric until the 1970s. Over the years, I've known and performed with several of the musicians in the pit band at the Lyric. Today, the beautifully renovated theater, originally designed by the well-known New York firm of J. McElfatrick, hosts stage shows, the Allentown Symphony, and HD broadcast performances of the Metropolitan Opera. It's the only large, historic theater extant in Allentown.

Confession of a sinner: I once found a small trove of 78 rpm record albums stashed in a closet on the mezzanine level of Symphony Hall; they had belonged to a former executive director of the Symphony Association, which owns the building. My nefarious mind reasoned that these would only be thrown out if nobody rescued them from an ignominious end in the landfill, so I selected a few of the best ones. These are now on permanent loan in my collection . Mea culpa!

[estott]

Milton's brother Edwin (my Great-Grandfather) was head violinist at the Lyric.

Burlesque survived at the Lyric until the 1970s. Over the years, I've known and performed with several of the musicians in the pit band at the Lyric. Today, the beautifully renovated theater, originally designed by the well-known New York firm of J. McElfatrick, hosts stage shows, the Allentown Symphony, and HD broadcast performances of the Metropolitan Opera. It's the only large, historic theater extant in Allentown.

Confession of a sinner: I once found a small trove of 78 rpm record albums stashed in a closet on the mezzanine level of Symphony Hall; they had belonged to a former executive director of the Symphony Association, which owns the building. My nefarious mind reasoned that these would only be thrown out if nobody rescued them from an ignominious end in the landfill, so I selected a few of the best ones. These are now on permanent loan in my collection . Mea culpa!

When Edwin played there the theater wasn't featuring the sort of Burlesque generally associated with the name.

[Henry]

Milton's brother Edwin (my Great-Grandfather) was head violinist at the Lyric.

Burlesque survived at the Lyric until the 1970s. Over the years, I've known and performed with several of the musicians in the pit band at the Lyric. Today, the beautifully renovated theater, originally designed by the well-known New York firm of J. McElfatrick, hosts stage shows, the Allentown Symphony, and HD broadcast performances of the Metropolitan Opera. It's the only large, historic theater extant in Allentown.

Confession of a sinner: I once found a small trove of 78 rpm record albums stashed in a closet on the mezzanine level of Symphony Hall; they had belonged to a former executive director of the Symphony Association, which owns the building. My nefarious mind reasoned that these would only be thrown out if nobody rescued them from an ignominious end in the landfill, so I selected a few of the best ones. These are now on permanent loan in my collection . Mea culpa!

When Edwin played there the theater wasn't featuring the sort of Burlesque generally associated with the name.

No, of course not, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Apologies if I wasn't clear on that point. The Lyric was a vaudeville house until the movies killed vaudeville, and movies were, in fact, shown at the Lyric. The projection booth and associated equipment were removed during an earlier renovation (c. 1980s, IIRC). The house itself (1901) pre-dated sound films by a good quarter century, and the booth was installed as an add-on centered in the upper part of the balcony, taking up the space of several rows of seats. When that postcard photo was taken (c. 1910), the marquee showed that the the act playing the Lyric was the black-face comedy team of McIntyre and Heath, who had a very long career in the show business. The marquee also shows that their act at the time included a musical comedy routine/sketch/skit entitled "The Ham Tree" (which, incidentally, W.C Fields had performed in on Broadway as early as 1905, thus transforming his act from that of a mute "tramp" juggler to that of a stage comedian). Burlesque as we think of it was a later development at the Lyric.

[JerryVan]

Do any of YOU have a dealer in your past?

My grandfather made and sold bootleg whiskey during the Prohibition. Does that count?